Comptroller Scott Stringer is to announce Monday that placement agents will no longer get a piece of the action for brokering business with New York City’s $150 billion retirement system. Photo: Brigitte Stelzer

Middlemen known as “placement agents” will no longer get a piece of the pie for brokering business with New York City’s $150 billion retirement system, The Post has learned.

City Comptroller Scott Stringer is set to announce Monday that the boards of trustees of all five city pension funds have passed a resolution barring intermediaries from helping arrange investments by the funds.

“Quite frankly, this was long overdue,” Stringer told The Post on Sunday. “We want to hold up our pension funds as a model for the nation, and in order to do that, we had to take the placement-agent issue off the table permanently.”

The use of placement agents erupted in scandal in 2009, when two top aides to then-state Comptroller Alan Hevesi were busted for running a massive “pay-to-play” scheme involving state pension-fund investments. In 2011, Hevesi was sent to the slammer for accepting nearly $1 million in cash, gifts and campaign contributions for steering $250 million in state pension money to the Markstone Capital Partners fund.

Hevesi’s chief political adviser, Democratic consultant Hank Morris, also landed behind bars in the kickback scheme. Morris admitted he made about $19 million in placement fees on more than 20 pension-fund investments and secretly shared the loot with cronies including the late Liberal Party chief Raymond Hardy.

Stringer said the new rule, which expands a ban on placement agents that previously applied only to stock-market investments, “sets a new tone and a new day for the New York City pension system.

“You don’t need a politically connected intermediary to do business with the pension funds, and we’ve made that very clear,” he said.

Stringer, who serves as investment adviser to the pension funds and custodian of their cash, proposed the placement-agent ban shortly after taking office in January. The plan was approved last month by officials representing the city’s cops, firefighters, teachers and municipal workers.

The Board of Education retirement system was the last to sign on, voting in favor on Thursday, according to Stringer’s office.

About 372,000 workers are currently paying into the pension system, while about 293,000 former employees are drawing benefits.

Only two of about 250 investment firms currently doing business with the city’s pension funds — Thornburg Investment Management of Santa Fe, NM, and Sprucegrove Investment Management of Toronto — got their deals after hiring placement agents. Neither firm responded to requests for comment Sunday.